Gangster Stories (and its companion, Racketeer Stories) quickly came under censorship pressure in New York state, instigated by John S. Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a state entity empowered to recommend obscenity cases to prosecutorial authorities.
In July, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice lodged a complaint, and 130 copies were seized from four bookstores owned by Doubleday and from the New York Public Library.
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His most famous painting, September Morn (1912), became a "Succès de scandale" in the United States in May, 1913, when Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, protested against the painting as supposedly immoral.
John S. Sumner (1876–1971), headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice